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Torrent Freak Reports Most Pirated Games of 2009
by Garnett Lee, Dec 29, 2009 3:30pm PSTAmong the many year-end stories file sharing site Torrent Freak tabulated the most pirated games of 2009. Using data from public BitTorrent tracker reports they calculated the total number of times each game had been downloaded. It comes as little surprise to see Modern Warfare 2 take the ignominious top spot with a whopping 4.1 million PC copies downloaded and another 970,000 for the Xbox 360.
That figure indicates potentially staggering growth in PC piracy during 2009. Last year Spore, a game that had been much maligned for its security features, claimed the top at only 1.7 million downloads. Besides Modern Warfare 2 more than doubling up on that figure, all five of the most downloaded games of 2009 (the other four being the Sims 3, Prototype, Need for Speed Shift, and Street Figher 4) eclipsed that mark. Video games do show significantly less traffic than the movie industry, though. Star Trek clocked in as the most pirated film of 2009 at almost 11 million downloads, barely edging out Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at 10.6 million.
The full figures from Torrent Freak follow:
PC Games Downloaded on BitTorrent in 2009
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- 4,100,000
- The Sims 3 -- 3,200,000
- Prototype -- 2,350,000
- Need for Speed Shift -- 2,100,000
- Street Fighter 4 -- 1,850,000
Xbox 360 Games Downloaded on BitTorrent in 2009
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 -- 970,000
- Street Figther 4 -- 840,000
- Prototype -- 810,000
- Dirt 2 -- 790,000
- UFC 2009 Undisputed -- 720,000
Wii Games Downloaded on BitTorrent in 2009
- New Super Mario Bros. -- 1,150,000
- Punch-Out! -- 950,000
- Wii Sports Resort -- 920,000
- The House of the Dead: Overkill -- 860,000
- Mario Power Tennis -- 830,000
Comments
But we do know two things for certain from that report:
1 - Having SecuROM or limited activation schemes / other restrictions on the discs did nothing to stop the pirates from playing the games. Yet some developers are still under the illusion that it does, and that doing things at their paying customers' expense is going to bring in more revenue.
2 - Not releasing the game for the PC platform isn't going to stop piracy the way some developers think. Clearly, X360 piracy is doing its best to catch up with PC game piracy, with the Wii following closely behind. In other words, two of the most common fallacious arguments regarding piracy that are used by developers as excuses to not release a game on PC, are proven false yet again.
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The Internet has expanded so much in the last decade to third world countries. I don't want to offend anyone in particular so I'll start from where I was born. Eastern Europe.
People there and other developing countries cannot afford to spend $50 on a game when they earn $200 a month (if they're lucky). Do you think that stops them from playing a game?
In my opinion PC piracy is directly proportional to the increase in Internet speed and availability. Can you honestly say those are lost sales?
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MW2 360: >4 million sales, <1 million torrents
and there is a question why publishers want to drop pc games for consoles?
Is it cost, availability, lack of a demo, perceived lack of value, or some other factor?
While I do think that these numbers can be way off due to several factors - like people packaging malicious software with the name of whatever download is currently popular, dynamic IP's, and people switching to a different release trying to get better speeds - it would appear that even if you throw out 50% and add in the actual sales, the PC gaming segment is fairly large.
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As far as CoD6... Feature stripped + $10 extra gave the idiots the idea they could spite IW / Activision by pirating it when all they have done is boosted the piracy rate and given ample reason to Activision not to make another one on the platform again. But if they actually do, it will likely be ported by the likes of Valusoft... and you all thought this was a bad port? Pffft... wait till it gets the SoF3 treatment!
I would like to think it would have had an equal or smaller piracy rate compared to CoD4 if it was designed the same or improved upon for PC but we'll never know.
Either way, I give a hearty *finger* + fuck you to the pirates and an even bigger fuck you to counterfeiting syndicates overseas who're especially bad at pirating large volumes of copies on the black market.
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"But dookiebot a developer would rather sale 100,000 games at $50 then 500,000 games at $10 and end up with the same amount of profit."
Then they are lazy and cheap just like the pirates. Get off you ass and work for my money.
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The article in question doesn't list any specific sources, doesn't describe any methods to attain those nice neat rounded numbers, doesn't adequately explain why the numbers may have doubled (surely utorrent isn't the only client growing in usage - and if it is, that doesn't account for people switching from one client to another), and is completely ambiguous about what it means by "The data for these lists is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected." I posted as much on the torrent freak blog though my comments are "awaiting moderation".
Yet, instead of Shack / Garnett questioning such basic journalist standards and writing an article that can responsibly promote discussion on the subject, we get this regurgitated pile of poo on the front page.
I wrote this on TorrentFreak and I will repeat it here:
This is all Statistics / Responsible Journalism 101. Articles likes these are grossly negligent in an area where there is already an over-abundance of misinformation and general FUD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
1. Get some reasonable options in stores like Best Buy. You have to buy the $1500 - $2000 desktop to get the model with a decent graphics card. They just don't have any reasonably priced systems with mid range specs and a good graphics card. Builders like myself know you can put together a complete package for well under $1000 and get great gaming performance. But the average person doesn't.
2. Promote and advertise the PC as a gaming platform, advertise the game and embrace digital distribution and take advantage of its benefits.
3. Optimize the game for the PC, don't give them a crappy console port 3 months after its initial release and wonder why it sells bad.
4. Take advantage of what you can do on the PC and cant do on the console. Release the game for free and charge for micro transactions. Break the game up and charge for MP and SP separate, keep in touch with community and release multiple updates with no limitations set by Microsoft or Sony, take advantage of the high end hardware and multiple displays that all gaming machines are capable of.
5. Just try a little harder and stop releasing shovel ware.
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That game was (and is) not worth $60 for a single 5 hour single player campaign.
Good multiplayer is a heck of a piracy deterrent.
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Steam special christmas deals ftw. bought 3 games already :)
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How come there is no hack / mod for it ? Did sony actually managed to beat piracy ?
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"What will happen when we gargle fuck PC gamers by adding $10 and removing features?"
Yup, you further devalue your IP and push away legitimate customers.
IMO. You'll always have a background level of piracy that is untouchable and frankly doesn't impact your bottom line. Grow some balls and write it off as word of mouth marketing. Reasonable DRM and hitting your customer's needs are the best way to affect piracy rates.
Still it's interesting to see a fragment of information that points to console piracy being far more considerable the the delusional fanboys think. It's what? about 1 in 5 copies of MW2 on 360 pirated? not bad for a platform that is "too much of a hurdle" to get to play pirate games.
The platform is largely irrelevant, what's important is the customers, those who pirate on PC will likely pirate on consoles. Shifting your business to consoles may increase sales (who'd have thought people who bought a games console would buy games), but the effects of piracy will slowly follow it.
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On the other side...I've heard mixed things about MW2's PC sales...how did it fare overall on the PC? I remember Bowling saying that it outsold MW1 on the PC...but then Randy Pitchford a while ago mentioned a story about the NPD numbers being dissappointingly low for it.
I'm kinda torn on the subject of its sales too...there's a small element of schadenfreude to be had over it given the way they handled things in the build-up to the release on the PC side (which was quite frankly, baffling and so poorly handled that one almost wonders if they have a PR department)...but I don't want to see it fail really. I found the game to be a little dissappointing (oddly this year could be described in those terms)...but I really don't want to see it hurting PC gaming as a whole.
The damned pirates simply ensure that nothing will get better.
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